


The Grey Before The Light

by Phrenotobe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Noir, F/F, Gen, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:58:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe/pseuds/Phrenotobe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’ve gotten used to looking at clients by their measurements instead of their faces, because in the sleep-deprived fugue you wander in, it’s the one thing you’ve trained yourself to notice. The season's rains remind you of your pale ex, who was an expert in making you feel needed, and as though you were about to step off the edge of a precipice nearly every time you met. You tell yourself over and over again in the half light of dawn that she’s not worth missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The misery of Kanaya Maryam

_There are a lady’s hands visible by the light of a lamp, and a deck of cards on the table. Reading a fortune by the tarot is flamboyant. Reading a fortune with four suites and jokers is smug.  
The lady herself lifts it like it’s a favour, shuffling it with an expert hand. She hands it to the person on the other side of the desk, and tells them curtly to tap it twice and ask a question._

You’ve gotten used to looking at clients by their measurements instead of their faces, because in the sleep-deprived fugue you wander in, it’s the one thing you’ve trained yourself to notice. The season's rains remind you of your pale ex, who was an expert in making you feel needed, and as though you were about to step off the edge of a precipice nearly every time you met. You tell yourself over and over again in the half light of dawn that she’s not worth missing.  
This troll in your room looks like a twelve at the hip but a sixteen at the shoulder, and she’s hopping from one foot to the other with energy, her trench coat dark with dust and becoming ragged at the tail ends. Her shoes are paradoxically new and beetle carapace black.  
You don’t think it’s nerves, but back when you could manage to rest enough to waste that kind of vigour, you did the same thing. She clears her throat, higher pitched than you’d expect.

You avert your glance as she grasps at the edge of her coat between the edge of her fingers before putting a hand on a hip, the other going up as if she’s about to doff an invisible hat. Deference is an acceptable part of the back and forth of the hemospectrum; this dame just looks a little lost. 

“Are you Kanaya?” she asks, puffing her chest out, bold, “I’m a private investigapurr.”  
It takes a moment for it to go through.  
“Oh,” you say flatly, “Okay.”  
It’s not the most eloquent you’ve ever been, but she gives you a smile, bright and toothy.  
“I don’t suppose,” you say, and damp your dry lips with the tip of your tongue, “that you could tell me your name?”

“Oh!” she says, as if it’s a second thought. “Nepeta! Nepeta Leijon.”  
You nod, slowly, and take a minute to shift your weight from one foot to the other. You’ve been sleepless so long that your extremities sometimes begin to tingle.  
“And do you want me to make you any clothes?”  
She laughs, but you can’t see the joke, and leads you by the hand to your door.

Nepeta takes you to a small cafe down the road that you’ve been avoiding for the past however long, saving your coins for a rainy day. Large, loud rain-drops start to splatter the pavement, and the tealblood owner goes out, muttering profanity, to put covers over the tables outside. 

“I need a partner,” Nepeta explains, her fingers drumming on the table. She wasn’t about to take off her jacket until you mentioned it, and she watched you lay yours over the back of your seat with wide, owlish eyes before she copied the motion. The tails of her coat spread ridiculously across the floor behind hers, and she gives you a smile full of nerves, the muscles in her back flexing like oiled weasels as she leans forward to rest her forearms on the table. You wonder faintly why this is happening to you, because it seems far-away and dreamlike.

She orders for you, at ease with the menu and the chipper waitress, and you sit quietly and try not to stare into the middle distance, nodding politely as she goes even though you probably don’t need to.

“Why did you pick me?” you say, a little hoarse, just to move the conversation along afterwards, and she wiggles in her seat like she’s winding up to tell a story. You hope you can follow it, and you’re bracing yourself for puns, reaching carefully for your glass to tip liquid down your parched throat. Outside, the rain drums against the windows like it’s trying to break through, and you meditate on your shoes. They will be ruined, much as the rest of your day to day existence is, and there is little you can do. 

She’s fine, saw you walking to the stores and thought you needed a friend, she says, and you’re willing to take things at face value. Her fingers link and unlink together as she begins to draw a pattern into the tablecloth, a complex series of events that you can’t really focus on properly, but you do your best. “He’s gone,” she says at the end, her eyes dropping to where her finger sits, at the end of a cross still faintly etched into the raised fabric trails, one short end and one long, the latter angled into an arrow. Somehow you were expecting a tragic love story, and it looks like it didn’t disappoint. 

“He?” you add, and lift your drink again to cover your mouth. Her nod is guilty, hurried, and you know you missed a name somewhere, and you guess you regret it, insomuch as you’re able to feel anything other than fatigue and irritation. She reaches to pat your hand, laying motionless and idle on the table, and you twitch at the touch of it, the warmth and the gesture itself.

“I’m sorry,” she says, with a sad note, a lonely note, and you blink slowly, and lift your hand to place it over hers. “No,” you find yourself saying, a tired old phrase from a romance novel, “I’m sorry.”  
“Cute.” The server comments, breaking the two of you up from your shared moment of mutual ineptitude, and you raise your head to thank her properly. Nepeta takes ownership of your hand, turning it over and putting her palm on yours, her fingers slipping in and squeezing the dips of your knuckles fondly.  
“Um,” you mutter, and gaze at the sandwich in front of you. Nepeta leans across the table to use her other hand, rotating the plate, and you’re looking at a diamond now, not a square, split in two.  
“Oh.” you say, for the second time today, “I see.”  
It’s a date.

It’s not the warm evening that seems like so long ago, when your first pale partner leaned too far and kissed your cheek, sloppily, grasping for both your hands in a public display. You’re too weary for this, or for caring about another person properly. If you cared about anybody you’d be caring for yourself.

“I don’t know,” you murmur, and the idea of somebody pitying - actually wanting to comfort you - fills you with a kind of hopeless mirth. You’re not a troll any more, you’re a waste of space, and instead of culling you which at this point is just a step down from your usual habits of running the sewing machine listlessly and trying not to catch your fingers in the workings, she’s taken you out for dinner. “Why me?”  
“Why not you?” she asks, and her thumb brushes over the back of your hand, a callous on the pad of it from manual work. You look her over again, reassured by her solidity. 

 

_The cards are received into the hands of the teller; she deals five face down, and then another three, before directing her attention to the person on the other side of the table._  
_She hums a smug note, and flips over the first card.  
“Your past overfloweth,” she says, “with good fortune. But we both know that.”_


	2. An imperfect Moirallegiance

You reach over to the shared sandwich and lift the corner nearest you to look at the filling. A translucent fruity sauce lays in wait beneath, sugary and spread evenly, a dab of cream from the upper layer mixing in and leaving louche pink swirls.  
“Thank you,” you say, softly. “For offering to share with me.”   
Her mouth pushes into a little pout, and she leans back in her seat to look at you properly.  
“Fur real?” she says, and reaches to flick your eartip. “Eat it all.”  
“Are you sure?”   
She looks at the color of your sign, then at your face.  
“You don’t want it?”   
“I do,” you say, swift and guilty, “I just didn’t expect..” Anything. You didn’t expect anything. Not Nepeta, or the talk, or the cafe, those shiny shoes or the gentle squeeze of her warm hand that keeps you from floating off into the dreary, rain-soaked haze you’ve been shuffling around in instead of making yourself think.  
“I’m not, um,” you say, “I mean, thanks,” you gesture at the sandwich weakly, leaning a little closer to try and smell it, and will yourself to be hungry instead of just putting it in your mouth to chew it and let it sink down your throat with listless disinterest.

She hums a thoughtful note, putting an arm around your shoulders. Your resistance lasts right up until she tears off a strip of crust and holds it under your nose.   
“Come on,” she says, “Or I’ll chew it for you first.”  
You huff at the notion, and on the next breath in, the scent of the bread gets to you.   
Coming over green with shame, you take it with your teeth a little faster than you want to. It’s fresh, slightly sweet, and she’s watching you right until you swallow it.   
Nepeta’s hand lingers by the plate, prepared to take another piece. 

You divert your attention to pick up the half closest to you, taking a huge bite to show that you can manage it, and reach over with the rest of the chunk to aim it for her mouth.   
“Open up,” you say, expecting her to defer, but she just lets her jaw drop, laughing. You snatch another bit off the end almost unconsciously before you give it to her, while she lets go your hand to wave her arms at you.   
“purrlease,”she pleads after swallowing, “It’s yours.”  
“Moirails share,”you rejoin, finally admitting it. She shivers a little, pleased as punch, and leans forward to rest a hand on your shoulder, before picking another chunk off with her teeth.  
“Yeah,” she echoes, “Moirails share.”

It’s a mutual decision to wait out the rain; her shoes hate the thought just as much as yours do, but the server reminds you that shelter isn’t free without additional purchase, and you can’t find your purse after Nepeta’s paid for the sandwich. You decide to risk it, nodding at your friend and removing your shoes before you open the door. Nepeta stays a half-step behind, before doing the same, and you laugh as she pulls a sock off in each hand, stuffing them into the toe.  
“Ready?” she asks, and then charges out into the downpour, screaming a happy warcry. You watch her go, getting soaked in seconds and yelling at the skies. You linger before accepting your fate.

She’s dancing, almost, trying to hop between raindrops while you’re just trying to see where you’re going. The drops are thick, on the edge of warm, and she takes you by the hand again like she’s leading you home. 

Taking cover in the lobby of your hivestem, she seems reluctant to go, hopping from foot to foot against the chill of the chitin tiles, then taking it slow as she puts on her socks. The cuffs on her pants are thoroughly soaked, as is her coat, and an arc across her belly where the rain hit even though she hunched over against it. You imagine you look similarly sodden. 

“Are you going to be all right out there on your way home?” You ask kindly.   
She starts, then curls in, pretending she didn’t hear, and tugs at her laces, cussing quietly as one side breaks under tension.   
You leave an awkward silence until it becomes mutually unbearable, your skirt dripping loudly from the hem.  
“Do you have a place to stay?” 

She looks a little sad. You start to feel really uncomfortable.   
“You don’t have a place to stay.”  
She shakes her head, and pulls the remainder of her lace through the eyelet of her boot, tying it together in a rough and quick knot, end over end.   
“I guess there’s room,” You admit, your fingers nervously laced into quite a knot themselves, “If you’re tidy.”  
She looks surprised, for a moment, before getting to her feet, and she takes a dash forward into a swift hug that knocks the breath out of you, her horn bumping against your thorax.  
“Oh,” you manage, lifting the arm she hasn’t pinned to your side, and tentatively petting her head despite the damp, “Don’t worry,” you add, searching the pockets of your memory for the loose change of conversation, “Things will get better.”  
She doesn’t say a lot, hiding her face in the angle of your shoulder, and you sigh as the wet from her hair seeps into the collar of your shirt.   
“I have a spare shoelace,” you add, “But there isn’t any sopor.” 

_“A trial in the future,” the fortune teller murmurs, “Bad luck. If she is smart and determined, she will prevail.”  
Her hand goes to touch the card again. “This is a change needed. She has spent a long time in the shadows.” _


	3. But you never listen to anyone

She follows in your wake as thunder rumbles malevolently outside, the crack of a lightning touch ever so close behind and lighting up the sky. The hallway is chilly, the doors identically closed against the rain. The shutter membranes are too slow to react to the storm, and flicker opacity like the dying throes of a lightbug. Down the hall, grim and blackened marks surround somebody’s doorway, and it seems as though a psionic tried to force entry, but it’s none of your business to investigate for yourself.

She recognizes your door, almost before you do, and trips in lightly after the door swings open, shivering at the temperature. In your haste, the two of you left the window open. There’s a damp and rained-on arc underneath the window, and she closes it with a squeak and a clatter, pulling a new face at the damp squish of the carpet beneath her soles.

Moving toward your sewing box, you find the shoelace waiting there, for the right moment. Picking it out, you offer it up before shuffling off for towels. She shivers like she wants to follow you around, and shuffles from foot to foot with a quiet squelch coming from her shoes, before removing them entirely. Her jacket comes off again too, to hang on the hook on the inside of your door, and you’re a little glad there’s something else to remember there, instead of what used to be. 

There’s spare clothes, though they’re a little colourful for most; the only t-shirts that fit Nepeta are the large fit that you have on hand for modifying with a deep slash at the neck and a quick machine-run hem. She takes one in both hands, looking a little awed, and flips it inside out, tugging off the one with her glyph before you have a chance to avert your eyes.  
“Um,” you manage, putting a hand to your face.  
She takes your forearm, pulling it away, your loaned shirt already on.  
“Do you have any pants?” she says, with a tilt of the head, shaking a sodden denim leg at you. 

_The fortune teller flips over another card._  
 _“Upheaval in your present,” she says, “Things will change.”_  
 _There’s an appropriate thunderclap overhead, and the glimmer of a smile on her face._   
_“How can you know this when you wear a blindfold?” the person on the other side of the table says, hoarse.  
_ _“Ah,” the fortune teller says, reaching for the third card, “That would be telling.”_

You’ve not looked at your recuperacoon in a week, and while you sort through the detritus of your work and neglected fond habits, Nepeta lifts up on her toes to look at the slime inside, prodding the grainy, dried-up crust with a finger.  
“Supurr gross,” she comments, and kicks the pointed end, listening carefully to the booming reverberation through the remaining liquid gel. “Where do you sleep?” she queries, looking around. You gesture vaguely, embarrassed, toward the concupiscent couch in the corner, sheets still awry from your last nightmare. You haven’t tried it since.  
“Huh,” she says, and trots over to look at it, “I guess it could work.”  
You cringe, going green from one eartip to the other. Of course, there’s room for two. That’s what a couch is. 

“I’m sorry,” you say, and she lifts the cover between thumb and fingertip. Her powerful shoulders roll in a nonchalant shrug.  
“It’s fine,” she says, grasping the sheet and flicking it to make it flat again, which is a move you wish you’d considered, “It’s just a place to sleep, anyway.” Nepeta presses down with her knuckles, almost kneading it as she tests the foam filling, patting it here and there for lumps and picking off a piece of lint.  
The thunder outside begins to recede, moving northwards, but the rain stays a constant drumming against the windows. It’s the weather that a troll planning vengeance wishes for; and the kind that members of the cruelest bar grow to hate. 

“Tired yet?” she asks, patting it again, and looking at you carefully.  
Are you ever tired; there’s nothing you’d love more than to sink under a layer of green slime and become unconscious for longer than two hours at a stretch. Something is wrong with you, past the keyed-up hours running on mania and the lows where you do nothing but gaze defocused into the middle distance.    
“A little,” you admit. She keeps her gaze on you, and doesn’t move a muscle, but her left eyebrow raises up a good half-inch.  
“A lot,” you say, quietly, “But I might thrash around. You should take it instead, I’ll make do with, um, something else.”  
“Nuh-uuuuh,” she corrects you, and you flinch at the singsong mockingness of it.  
“It’s not a pile,” you manage, after a long moment of thought. You can’t manage a quick retort on this much sleep; it’s akin to asking a half-impacted wiggler to catch a wild cholerbear.  
“Doesn’t need to be.” 

_“Do you ask for her, or for you?” the fortune teller asks smugly.  
There’s no reply, so she fills the silence with a curt sniff. “Well, then. Let me See.”_

Nepeta curls around you, once you finally capitulate. Her head fits to the middle of your back, her thighs tucked up under the bend of your knees, and she sighs thoughtfully.  
“Spondulicks for your thoughts?” you murmur.  
“I miss people,” she says, and there’s a muted impact from the shaped foam mattress as she flops bonelessly onto her back, “I miss my stuff.” She prods at your vertebral support segments, making you shuffle uncomfortably. “I thought growing up would be easier.”  
“Please stop that,” is all you can manage, and she falls quiet.

It’s five minutes later when your eyelids are drooping at last, when she breaks the silence.  
“Do you miss anybody too?” she asks, carefully taking a little pinch of your shirt between her fingers, like you won’t notice.  
“I don’t think I do,” you lie.  
“That seems kinda lonely,” she says, her voice holding a lilting sort of sadness.  
You give her a quiet grunt in reply.  
“They demolished my neighborhood,” she adds in a stage whisper, “Because there were cultists somewhere.”  
A shiver runs down your back, and you’re sure Nepeta can feel it, but you let the words hang uncomfortably in the air until unconsciousness finally takes you again.

_The fortune teller’s hands finally fall flat to press against the chitin hybrid surface, dark stained and textured in minutiae to hold papers and other items in place ‘til they are moved again.  
“You realize, of course, that it’s much muddier to do a reading with two of you here.” _


	4. Old apartment blocks and new friends

The next few days are a haze, and you forget a lot because your brain just doesn’t have the resources to put things into long-term memory, but Nepeta’s faith and her one-color warmer skin - or is it two now, you can’t be sure - help you settle, even if you just end up staring at the ceiling most nights; listening to the soft wheezing of her breath, the opaque shutters stuttering with their age and letting traces of light back in when the sky becomes overcast. Human babble sometimes drifts in with the air vents, tourist chatter and xenophiles and language students, but you’re one isolated state-officiated idiosyncrasy in a sea of dutiful midbloods, so your neighborhood isn’t that attractive to those seeking novelty. 

The two of you seem to be waiting for something, though you can’t be sure you both need the same thing. Your business is conducted from home, so it’s not really an issue, but your unexpected guest scuffs her feet on the carpet and paces the floor like she’s yearning for a walk. Every time you fall into a comfortable state of meditative focus, whether it’s sewing or patching or just running your machine to get something done to supplement your color-allotted income in light of new developments, she taps you twice on the shoulder, takes your arm, and leads you outside into the light of stars. 

The two of you haven’t made any solid decisions yet toward getting a new recuperacoon, even though more and more people are noticing that you’re an item; if you cleaned the gunk out of your old one, you’d be able to use it again, but it’s narrow and upright, and not suitable for guests. You don’t really want to admit that you’d rather face down daymares than sleep alone, and you’re not sure how to approach the subject properly without breaching some kind of invisible rule about it. Meanwhile, your thermal hull slowly fills up again with things you’ve never tried before, and the shophockers and non-automated luxury goods distributors seem to have learned your face.

One warm evening, things are almost normal, and a robot rests presumptively over your door as you return from picking up groceries. Of late, your habits have been upgraded from merely passing for conscious to wryly aware of your surroundings. The robot flutters the navigational aids set aboard the thorax and squats lower as it detects your movement. It spits out a long curl of on-the-spot rendered typography on a piece of wood pulp tape, back-to-front so you have to wait for it to finish, and you tear it off and hand it to Nepeta, who flinches as she reads it, and hands it back. You give it a look over, and because presenting your identification currently stowed somewhere among the bags of shopping you’re hauling in both arms is the kind of bother you’re not looking for, you put them down and nick your fingertip. You let a drop of unique blood land into the biological input receptacle. You’re the only jadeblood above ground on the continent, so it doesn’t take long to process. 

Nepeta sidesteps a little more behind you as you check the liquid display, peering around your arm while you prod lazily through menus until you find the check box for Emergency Moirail Dispensation, which means cohabitation is on the cards for another two perigees before it comes back. You’re not quite sure if the emergency is hers or yours, but you need Nepeta here. Satisfied that you’re not harbouring fugitives or sub-renting your own living space, the robot begrudgingly lifts off to buzz limply to the next problem on the internally logged list. As you unlock the door and squint irately at the notches it left on the outer walls, it starts to pick the lock on the burned-up doorway down the hall. The long, sharp tips it previously used to hold itself into your doorframe bump and scrape against the smooth surface, and if anybody lived there, they’d have opened the door to start arguing with it by now. 

Nepeta slips swiftly under your arm, and bounds towards the window, looking outside and taking a long, comforting breath. You don’t know why, and you don’t ask, either. She turns to look at you, drumming her hands on the sill, and looks back outside.  
“I needed to go soon anyway,” she says to the street outside, and she starts doing that fidget-shuffle-step from foot to foot that you’ve noticed she does whenever you’re about to get interrupted in the middle of something important. “You didn’t have to do that.”  
You shrug.  
“Help me put these away,” you say, “We need to talk.”  
She shivers, like she’s just been told off, and takes two bags in each hand before you reach over and adjust the balance to be a little less in your favour. She’s brisk, more focused than normal as she slips the cans into the cupboards under the counter and it makes you sigh a long, begrudging note.

“Are you going to leave?” you ask, joltingly hurried. The words blunder out of your mouth like you’re presenting your reasons for extra cloth allowance, unscripted and shaky as you snatch the can of offcut tuna scrapings before she’s able to, putting it up high to avoid the look on her face.  
Five minutes ago, things were fine.

_There’s a moment’s silence, and the fortune teller nudges over another card with a sweep of the hand._  
 _“Inversion,” they say quietly, “Take warning.”  
She touches it with her fingertips. “Things are not as they seem.” _


	5. Paw expectations

She drops her head, scuffs her foot on the floor and shoves her hands deep into her pockets. You can’t really say anything, so you just grab another can, and fit it into the space next to the first. You do this mechanically until your hands pat the bag and find nothing. She’s leaning a hip against the counter, hands still wrist-deep in her pant pockets, and is looking the most defeated she has ever been in your presence.

“I don’t know,” she manages, “Are you mad at me?”  
You keep both hands on the counter.  
“I don’t know.” you reply, because you really don’t.  
You were going to make her something, perhaps today or perhaps another, and if she goes she’ll have left without any evidence of her passing. You don’t want that to happen.  
You guess you’re not angry, you just feel sad.  
“I didn’t want you to leave,” you admit, “But if you have to...”  
You trail off. you don’t want to finish the sentence, because to be honest you don’t believe it. You don’t believe she’s going, either.  
“I like you.” You add.  
Nepeta makes a small, pained noise, a breath hitched in the middle. Her toe kicks harder at the floor, loud enough to bother your neighbours, and you end up grasping her shoulders, dipping just slightly to look at her downturned face.  
She turns away from you willfully, not crying, though her lips are puckered and her eyebrows are drawn down into a fierce, angry frown, though it’s hard to work out why.  
You hope it isn’t your fault, but you think it kind of is.  
“I am a little upset,” you say, because you are, “but I don’t think I should be worried about my feelings right now.”  
She puts a hand up to remove yours from one shoulder, and you can feel the coiled tension in her grip. You let her remove it, which she does gently, and drop your other hand to rest against her bicep.  
“Tell me what's wrong,” you ask, quietly, “Please.”  
Nepeta rubs at her face, shaking you off, and folds her arms across her chest.  
“I don't want to go,” she says, “But I think people are purrobably looking for me.”  
She frowns, and tilts her chin to look at you square.  
“Efurrything is a lionbility,” she says gravely, “Efurything I know.”  
She drums a fist against her chest, and you nod, but you’re still confused.  
“I have to find him.” She says, and grinds her teeth, “I don't want him to get furrther into trouble. He’s stupid.”

_The fortune teller’s smile reappears, glowing faintly pearlescent in the light of the lamp of the table. She turns over a card again with the same familiar reverence, and places her palm flat against the wood of the desk._

You manage, through the last dregs of guile you have, to convince her to stay the night again. You’re not quite sure if either of you sleep more than twenty human minutes at a stretch. Her shoulders shift down from tense as the night goes on and nobody shows up at your door, so it feels less like holding onto a sack of slightly warm, smooth stones that smell like rain and tracked in mud and borrowed surfacant liquid. The nape of her neck, bristle fuzz and natural curls, keeps the scent of fake bananas and the salted hint of nervous sweat.

When you wake up, you’re face-first into the sponge mattress, the bridge of your nose aligned at least two degrees away from where it normally finds itself. Nepeta is stuffing two tins of meat product into the pockets of her coat and has your only can opener in her other hand, as if she’s having second thoughts about taking it.  
“Don’t go,” you creak with the broken morning voice of the dehydrated.  
She jumps, lowers the can opener to your worksurface with a quiet clatter, and stares like you’ve done something really awful.  
Keeping her eyes on you, she reaches back into the cupboard for another can.  
“Don’t go without me,” you correct yourself, “Please.”

You don’t want her to go, for there walks the third girl you have ever loved. When it was the second, you never thought that you’d say that it would feel less bad if it was only redrom.  
People are always doing that leaving thing, you think, and it’s a thought you’re not quite certain you made up by yourself. You put out a hand, levering yourself up to a proper sitting position, stiff way down at the base of your spine. 

She rattles her digits on the counter, and then grips the rounded edge, leaning on it with her weight on one foot.  
“You’re stupid,” she says, her mouth an unimpressed line dimpled with her toothtips.  
You lean until your thoracic curve cracks, knuckles pressed into the soft tissues under where your thorax ends.  
“I know,” you admit, “But I have come to expect that perhaps, so are you.”  
Nepeta snorts, takes the can opener off the side again and slips it into an inner pocket.  
“Maybe the vigilant seamshredder would like to follow her companyan into dangrowrous territory?”  
Giving you an exaggerated wink, she sticks her tongue out at you.  
“Or they’ll never get their openpurr back.”  
Giving her pocket a pat, standing back on two feet, she looks toward the door. You can guess at what she’s about to do next, and it surprises you when she doesn’t shuffle around, steady and ready and straight-backed like a rustblood’s execution.  
“As fast as you can,” she murmurs evenly, “bring what you can’t leave.”

Drizzle taps at the window as you gather your things, feeling unprepared and nervous. You don’t know if she means things you’ll need or things you can’t bear to be without, so you strike a happy medium, tucking yourself into your best coat, winding the scarf you never wanted to wear around your neck. As expected, the puff of perfume left behind clears your head faster than anything else ever could, and choices after that are easier. Not by a lot, but easier.

_There’s an air of smugness as the fortune teller flicks over another card. Her audience grow nervous, and she raises her chin to gaze sightlessly into the middle distance.  
“A treasure uncovered,” she whispers theatrically, “once forgotten.”_


	6. A gift for a friend

“There’s still something missing,” you say softly, and your arm is around her shoulders, pulling her close into your own frame from behind just to feel the fit and shape. She tips her chin up to lock eyes with you.  
“I don’t see it,” she says, matching your barely-attempted guile.  
You dab a kiss to the side of her forehead, because you don’t know if it means anything.    
“Well,” you say, stalling for a little more time, “That’s because it’s not here yet.”

She groans, and you drag out a coil of tape from your pocket, dipping to measure her inner leg seam. She puts her hand on your head, right between your horns. There is a small, unique roll of clean, unstarched cloth, kept safe and shaded in a cupboard you didn’t want to open. it’s been there a long time, and you lived waiting to use it and never taking that chance. You can’t take the roll with you. You think it will be a fitting gift. 

Nepeta pleads with you to leave before nightfall arrives, to make the most of the moonlight, but you’re not changing your mind. you can be stubborn, too, and running the machine happens any day so it’s not like it’s going to alert your neighbours. You have something to prove, that you actually can do it, and she stalks the edges of the room like she’s waiting for an exit to appear out of thin air. You’re not holding the door open just yet, cutting a curve to shape, tracing it out twice and folding it over. You want them to be sturdy. 

Nepeta seems nonplussed when you offer them to her, a pair of spats to cover her shoes and the ragged ends of her pants, mirrored to fasten up the inner seam, decorative snaps for style and an inner zip to keep up with her incessant movement. The spray should make them suitably hydrophobic. It looks like something from an old propaganda reel, but the color is all yours. If you had time - and you could have had time, if you’d said she should wait another day - you would have started to ornament them with layers of contrasting cloth, perhaps even some tape to make them lock snugly underneath the heel. But it’s ornate enough, and it means enough.

Nepeta rumbles quietly about them, and with the twist of her mouth as she puts them on, you wonder if it was worth it, but as the drizzle turns into proper rain and the first subsonic grumbles of the advancing weather front start, she huffs angrily and slams into you for a thorax-cracking hug. You grunt, pat her head and attempt to lever her off, but she doesn’t have any of it.  
“Why did you even do that?” she complains.  
You pat her head again, because it seems like the right thing to do.  
“I had to get something done before we had to go,” you murmur, “And I wanted to.”

_The Fortuneteller taps the card with a fingernail. “You’re too obvious for your own good.” she says with good humour, “But that’s just the way I see it.”_

The street outside has a few trolls on grocery trips with re-usable cloth bags, the street food hockers showing off the moving things in glass cases ready to be placed onto sticks and fried fresh. Nepeta grimly ignores them all, and leads you the same way you went on the day you met, down to the cafe. The tables are covered already, and the patches of dry beneath indicate that the owner didn’t take any chances on tonight. The server is already outside, leaning comfortably against the doorjamb and enjoying the night air as well as she can in the drizzle. The sign says it’s closed for inspection, and Nepeta slows to a stop. 

“It’s not actually closed,” she points out, cheerfully, “Just go in.”  
You put your hand into your coat pocket, feeling for your lipstick, and watch Nepeta’s back as she squares her shoulders. There’s a nigh-imperceptible lift as she curls her hands into fists, and though you feel like you can’t go by without a nod, the girl just shrugs with a smile, putting out a hand to check on the rain. You only wish you could be that carefree.

The inside is gloomy now the lights are off, the tables all covered with an identical white tablecloth despite the sign on the door. Nepeta snorts, and you tuck your chin into your collar, wondering what it’s all supposed to mean.  
“You’re here early!” comes a voice from behind the counter, and it is fair to say you jump a little bit.  
“Excellent. Now I don’t have to keep this closed all night. Bad for business, you know.”  
Nepeta changes her stance to rest on both feet, and you roll the lipstick in your pocket into your palm. It’s not going to do anything on short notice, but it makes you feel a little better. The speaker steps out leisurely from behind the counter, a stick in one hand, and the other hand stowed away in an apron pocket.


	7. Meet the Overseer

“Do you have it?” Nepeta says, a little louder than you’d say it, and the troll puts up a hand, a rolled piece of paper like a cigarette between two fingers.  
“Patience, please, ladies,” they say grandly, “Have a seat.”

_“So, perhaps a secret,” the fortune teller adds, “that has been concealed too long.”_

Her name is Terezi, and who and what she is doesn’t matter. She is a simple chef! Or more rightly a chef _overseer_. Distinctions are important.  
Her chef, who is also her server, and her grocery runner, and very fine indeed, glad you noticed, is outside, guarding the door, and Terezi settles her elbows on the table, leaning forward and gazing over your left shoulder as if she’s sizing up a person behind you. You lean a little toward where her face is pointing, to feel a little less uncomfortable, and it doesn’t really help.

“Is she a friend of yours or a friend of ours?” she asks Nepeta, and you decide to look at your hands on the table instead of involving yourself in the conversation. Nepeta hums like she’s thinking, and the troll laughs, removing her glasses and laying them on the tablecloth.  
“Things must be done properly,” She adds, “Or people complain.”  
Nepeta finally nods, and then, a moment later adds “Yes.”  
You raise your eyes from the too-short thumbnail where it broke off a little while ago, and realize that perhaps you made a lot of decisions in the past that were wrong, and didn’t matter even if you thought they did. There’s a grumble of weather from outside, and the door slams closed with a jingle.  
“You’re making this too dramatic!” the server says, flicking droplets of wet at the table from her fingers after she squeezes her hair out onto the welcome mat, “Just say you did it and give them the information, nobody is going to know.”  
She rolls her eyes, and plucks at the sodden T-shirt she’s wearing. “I’m going to borrow your clothes,” she adds, and meanders away behind the counter to the back room.

“My co-conspirator is unfortunately correct,” Terezi says, and puts their chin on their hands again, “However, I do think you should be briefed on certain issues that have transpired since you had to flee.”  
Nepeta’s shoe squeaks on the floor, and she plucks at your sleeve, dragging one arm under the table so she can grab your hand again. You try and give her hand a reassuring squeeze, but she crushes in return, making you flinch.  
“The green season has caused the safehouse to be moved,” the restaurant owner continues, “So they’re deeper underground.” She snickers at her own joke.  
“You’ll need a spade. Dig under the broken memorial in the Imperial Arboretum.”  
Nepeta’s palm slams against the top of the table, her lip curling, and you bite the inside of your cheek, hard.  
The cafe owner does not jump.  
“Oh, they’re not dead,” she says, grandly, “As far as I know. But the longer we talk, the more profit I will lose.”  
The roll of paper appears again in her hands, and you wonder how she did it, because your eyes didn’t follow. “Take the cypher and go.” She slides her glasses back onto her nose, drops the roll onto Nepeta’s fingers, and rubs at her chin like an invisible beard lays there. “I will not see you again,” she adds, and laughs, “Not now, or ever.” 

 

_“The conditions are ripe for success,” she says, sitting a little straighter, “Provided you act quickly. But do not rely on those around you to get it done - it must be under your own power.”_

 

The Imperial Arboretum is a reminder of wars and stupidity, memorials cast in steel and carved into stone, as grand and ugly and covered in wild animal droppings as any human churchyards. Trees are scattered without prior thought, brought to stumps where they dared to overhang a highblood, and the shrubbery is selected for invasive density. Nepeta bristles, and steps right past the _keep off the grass_ sign into the waist-deep underbrush. She takes four steps in and turns to look at you.  
“Aren’t you coming?” she asks.  
You give the lawn a begrudging sigh before you step over into it, and wish that it was on fire. The rain has finally soaked into your scarf, and you can’t tell if you’d be more dry with or without it.  
“I’m coming,” you add afterwards as she watches, “Right behind you.”

She tracks off, leaving a path that you follow, because she knows what to look for and you don’t. Dead generals from other star systems with outrageously large rumble spheres flex at the sky, and you decide that it’s best to stare straight ahead at the back of Nepeta’s head.  
“Do you know where we’re going?” you ask, just to make conversation.  
Nepeta shrugs. “Kinda?”  
A crack of lightning flashes, and the answering growl is very close behind.  
“Do you mean kinda yes or kinda no, not really, we should have asked for directions,” you reply without really thinking, and she shoots a dark look at you.  
“Kind of maybe yes!” she retorts, gesturing to the rest of everything, “But last time I was here, efurrything was nicer, so I don’t know!”  
You take a few more steps forward, and look around like you know what’s going on.  
“Everything was nicer before we came here,” you announce, “Can’t we just... Can we go home?”  
Nepeta’s hands ball into fists.  
“No,” she mutters, “It has to be now.”  
“But why now?” you ask, raising your arms, “What is so important that it has to be now?”  
“It’s hard to explain,” she says, frowning, her wet curls plastered to her forehead, “Just trust me, just a little bit more, okay?”  
She puts up her hand, pinches the air to show how much she needs. It seems like just a little too much for what she’s asking for.  
“I-” you start, and close your eyes a moment, wearily. “I don’t know.”  
She slinks toward you in the long grass, smooth back the way she came instead of widening the trail, and puts a hand on your arm. You don’t mean to, but you glare.  
“Here,” Nepeta says, softly, fixing you in her gaze until you break, “Take this, I’ll find it, and then we can go home.”  
She hands you the rolled up curl of paper, and you give it a glance before it goes away into your pocket, safe from the rain. She’s trusting you even more, but it also means you can’t leave now, and the feeling it gives you is grim.  
“Okay,” you manage, and groan a little when she gives you a brief, tight hug.


	8. Childhood rhymes put to bad use

The two of you are fully saturated when the broken memorial is found, with a patch of recently turned over earth too small to bury a complete troll. You twist your fingers together to guard against the thought. You wouldn’t have seen it had Nepeta not started at it, right in front of you, so you almost bumped into her. It’s a simple enough shape, a pair of arrows pointing upwards, mirrored evenly. One side is broken off halfway, the pieces laying a few feet from the stand.  
She brings out a spade from under her coat with such a smooth movement that you almost double-take, and squares her shoulders before extending the handle by a telescopic foot, starting to dig without a word.  
There’s not a lot to do besides watch, and conversation in a downpour is almost guaranteed to be dismal, so you just listen to the chomp of the spade as it cuts away the ground, and the splat as she places it to the side, a rhythm that probably doesn’t last as long as you feel it does before Nepeta hits something solid, using her toe to test the feel of it, in case it’s a rock.   
“I think I have it,” she chirps.  
“Well, okay,” you say, glad the silence is finally broken, “Did you want me to dig?”  
She chuckles, finally in good humour despite the wet that threatens to leak into everything you will ever be and have ever been, again.   
“No, it’s okay,” she says, leaning on her spade and looking into the hole, “I’m just glad it was actually here.” 

Nepeta sets about finding the edges of it, tapping the top and removing slices of wet earth from around the edges, too excited to worry about the rain. You try to key into that energy, but something just makes it feel cheesy and stupid, so you just fidget a little instead.  
It looks like a husktop at first, but turns out to be a captchachest, and the contents as much a mystery as the sight of a large, flat item you’ve never quite had the money for if you wanted groceries as well just covered in mud and waiting around in a public park to be found.   
Rooting around inside it, she hands off a pair of keys to you, and you think you see the spine of an old book before she drops it back in, tucking it, dirt and all, under her arm.  
“Done,” she says warmly, and you couldn’t agree more.

 

_The fortune teller sighs, a fond note.  
“I don’t think this will end how you expect,” she says, her fingertips touching the next card, “If you have expectations, it may be wise to leave them behind.”_

 

Under the overhang of a municipal transport shelter, the two of you guiltily work out where the new safe house is, using not one but perhaps two separately prohibited documents - something you’ve never seen before, but looks a lot like a propaganda bible, only the ideas inside it aren’t what you’re used to kind-of-disbelieving. You keep the disbelief, since it’s easier. The other document is a children’s song, revised when you were six sweeps old to redefine the generation beneath you once everybody’d grown old enough to stop singing it.

“The next bit?” Nepeta asks, shielding the book from view while also trying to read what’s inside it.  
“Olive,” you murmur, “In the hunter’s keep.”   
She hums happily, kicking her feet under the glutebar. “I think I know it, it’s purr-etty easy!”  
She slugs you affectionately in your arm, reminding you again of how much being dry seems like another time.  
“Yes,” you mutter tersely, “Very good.”


	9. The underground

The municipal transport vehicle draws up, shuttered windows half-crooked open to let air and damp in, and you both get on it, having silently agreed in the interim where you need to go. You think if there’s not any tealbloods on too, you can manage to get your hands on a decent seat close to a heater, and sneak Nepeta along with you. It would be nice to enjoy the warmth again for once. The driver doesn’t think anything of your request to get to the central station, and thinks even less about Nepeta being covered in muck and grass seeds, aside from what she might do to the seats. You pat her shoulder, give them a shrug and your best nervous smile, and angle her away to sit down while you take care of the fare. She picks a place far too close to the front, but at this point you think it’s a wonderful idea, and join her, warming up your toes and feeling your coat begin to gently steam.  
It’s a slow day, so you don’t even need to move before you reach your destination, and the two of you have managed to pick at small talk. She knows all of the books in your apartment somehow, but you’re not sure you remember ever seeing her reading. It’s probably the haze you were in before she came. Popular books are that way for a reason. 

She grabs your hand, finally warmed over enough for touching people to not be a horrid experience for everybody involved, and waves at the driver as she leaves.  
“I definitely left that seat gross and muddy,” she says proudly on the sidewalk, “So they’re totally right.”  
Her attitude is worrying, now that you care enough to worry. It’s about an hour to sunup, and there are plenty of people on their way home, taking the underground rail to where they need to go before it all starts up again for the day crowd. She tugs you down, into the strip-lit subway system, and takes a good long look around at the crowd, considering where to go next. You are now convinced that Nepeta never has a plan in mind before she does things, and the uncertainty would be thrilling if it wasn’t so scary to be irresponsible. 

She gets a ticket, good for any time, and hands it to you. She tells you to wait near the line on the far edge of the platform while she gets her own, and it seems a reasonable enough request. You watch her fidget around, looking at the faces of bluebloods like she expects to know one, and frowning at the change left in her hand before she gets her ticket. She finally takes out all of the things in her sylladex, arranging them in her pockets, before she’s got enough room for the captchachest. If she’d have told you, you’d have offered to help, but she never tells you anything.

She’s got her ticket, finally, and saunters over to join you by the end of the platform, smiling without a care in the world. The rough, barking voice of the conductor announces the next subway car will be along in a minute and a half, and her arm curls snugly around your waist.  
“Are you sure you know where it is?” You ask, and she nods.  
“Sure.” she says, warmly.  
“I can look after your things, if you need me to,” you add, and she shrugs, and shakes her head.  
“No, it’s okay, don’t worry about me,” she says, “Just go limp.”  
“What,” you say, blankly, and she pushes you off the platform.  
The sound of the train brakes as it comes around the corner drowns out your scream.


	10. This was not what I expected

_“But take heart,” The fortune teller adds, “Or whatever you use in their stead. There is still time for things to change. The future is uncertain, after all.”_

 

The tracks are not soft things to land on, but there’s about a minute before everybody boards the train and another minute before the last call goes out. Nepeta leaps after you, grabbing your arm and wrenching you up before shoving aside the metal grill that blocks the space underneath the platform and slipping through it.  
“C’mon,” she hisses, and you follow her, because dying is boring and you don’t want to try. Your sleeve catches on a piece of metal, and on adrenaline, you just pull it through. 

The waiting, the hot air and the dust left in the wake of all the people who didn’t decide on illegal things tonight is one thing, but the screech as it moves is another. Your ears ring painfully, and Nepeta’s fingers and gloves are covered with mixed rust and oil. You wait out the last couple of cars by getting out a cloth and working over all the grime that she’s accumulated in the past couple of hours, but it’s a lost cause, and you’re well aware of it. Unfortunately, you did not bring a book, and you can’t talk about anything. She waits it out by pulling faces at you, so you decide that it’s more of a bonding experience. 

She reaches over and boops your nose before checking the time, and raises an eyebrow, giving you a cunning smile.  
“Lights out,” she murmurs. The overhead strips blink out a couple of of seconds later, and you can see her pupils expand to make the most of the scant light. 

She crawls over your lap in the cramped space, sticking her head out of the gap and shuffling out until she’s able to get upright. She puts a hand on either hip, and looks up and down the tunnel.  
“Come on,” Nepeta says, “We’re purretty much there.” 

You scramble with as much dignity as you can manage out of the gap, and she replaces the wire cover again, and turns to reach for your hand.  
“Still friends after that?” she asks, and you look down at her hand, and back up at her face.  
“Yeah,” you say, “Still okay, I think.”  
She leads you up the tunnel, still warm, like the lair of a dragon. You still don’t know how the trains work, so it’s a reasonable enough assumption. After everything else, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise. 

_“There is a surprise for you,” The fortune teller says, and reaches behind her head to unknot her blindfold, “On the way.”  
She lays the blindfold on the table. _

“This is it?” You say, frowning at the nondescript service door. There’s a number on it, white paint for visibility, and it’s smoothly recessed into the wall.  
“This is it!” Nepeta says, and bumps you with her shoulder. “We did it.”  
You look at her sideways, still facing the door.  
“I’m not sure what we did,” you admit.  
You put your hand on the door, and it opens from the inside. 

_“They have travelled far,” the fortune teller says, “And I’m done with this mystical hogwash. Open the door, Vriska, and let them in.”_

Vriska is on the other side of the door, leaning against it as she looks at you with one good eye and one good arm put away in a pocket.  
“Hey,” she mutters, “Welcome to the Sufferer’s club.”  
Nepeta pushes past you both, and it’s not exactly a squeal as she meets them, but it’s something like it, a rush of babbling information that you never got any wind of, and the quiet bass rumble of somebody who doesn’t know how to tell a wiggler to be quiet. But then nobody has probably ever threatened to eat Nepeta and lived to tell about it, that much is certain.  
Vriska pulls her hand out of her pocket, and beckons you in.  
“Look, you were kind of dumb but I can let you in, I guess,” she says, drawling for effect.  
“Thank you,” you say, and elbow your way past her into the room. 

In the room there is a desk, and behind that desk a human woman, and her hands are folded together neatly on the tabletop. She gazes levelly at you.  
“Kanaya Maryam?” She says, “I don’t believe we have spoken before.”  
“No,” you say, “But I’m here anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At The Lowest End Lies The Rust  
> Then Brownbloods Born To Dust  
> After The Yellow Who Drive And Power  
> Lime That Died And Fell So Sour  
> Olive In The Hunters Keep   
> Jade That Watches The Grubs Sleep   
> Teal That Stands And Protects The Law  
> Cerulean Oversees The Shore  
> Strong Blue To Execute With Pride  
> Faithful Messiahs Above Them Reside   
> Those Above Are Born To Kill  
> And Then We Bow To Her Empresses Will
> 
> \- Alternian rhymes for children.


End file.
